Since this will be our last episode of The Pick for a little while, it’s overstuffed with plenty to keep you satisfied as we set our sights on Criterion Month. Not only do we review both 2008’s Mamma Mia! and its questionable yet miraculous sequel, we also sneak in a mini-review of Fast X, which is somewhere in between a Little Pick and a Big Pick. It’s an episode that serves as an ode to the fact that frivolous entertainment is nonetheless worthy of discussion and that any actor has the right to star in a musical no matter how underwhelming of a singer they are. Continue reading →

With Fast X currently in theaters, we’re taking a look back at Vin Diesel’s early career, back when he wasn’t exclusively racing cars and being Groot in movies. However, what we didn’t expect when picking Boiler Room was that we’d actually be getting a whole lot of Giovanni Ribisi, which was just as much of a pleasant surprise as this mostly-forgotten film was as a whole. It’s a welcome addition to the “bad dudes being bad” genre of kinetic filmmaking, and also sees us unsurprisingly inducting Ben Affleck into the three-timers club as well as (surprisingly) doing the same for Nicky Katt. Continue reading →

If for some reason you’re looking for real sickos content, then look no further than our discussion of the 2003 remake of the furry horror flick Willard. It’s perhaps the most divided response the three of us have had to a movie reviewed on The Pick, since one of us liked the movie quite a bit, and one of us did not at all. We get into both how this Willard relates to the 1971 original and its apparently musical sequel, as well as how the later Willard managed to pull off so many grotesque rat sequences with very little CG. So have a listen, you dirty rats! Continue reading →

Your wish is our command! Assuming your wish was for us to record a somewhat delayed review of an 8-month-old movie that not enough people saw in theaters. This week we’re talking about George Miller’s strange and sultry follow-up to Mad Max: Fury Road while also providing a brief history of djinns as well as our own answers to what our three wishes would be. We also follow up our last episode on the 90s Super Mario Bros. movie by talking about the new Super Mario Bros. Movie, which seems to be just a hair better than that prior notorious adaptation. Continue reading →

After our usual end-of-the-year and Oscar-induced break, we’re back with another season of The Pick! On the eve of a new Mario movie coming out this week, we take a look back at the first time Hollywood attempted to bring this massively popular but hard-to-adapt property to the big screen. So far, reviews of the new Mario Bros. movie seem to be mixed, but will it still end up being as derided as 1993’s Super Mario Bros.? It’s a little hard to imagine, since in this episode we get into how bad of a representation of the video games this movie is, though there are plenty of things to enjoy about its distinct production value and casting, even if a lot of it ends up being a big goopy mess. Continue reading →

We just couldn’t close out this year on Mildly Pleased or The Pick without getting wet and wild while learning the way of water. It’s a super-sized episode for a super-sized film, which includes a journey through the life and career of James Cameron and how he ended up at such an award-winning and financially unprecedented position in Hollywood. Also, if you were at all aware that a Pandora flavor of Frosted Flakes existed, you probably already could’ve guessed that we’ll be talking about it as one of our Little Picks. Continue reading →